Hi everyone, sorry for the wall of text but this has been on my mind for a period of time.
I have been thinking about upgrading my Yamaha PSR-S970 at some point. Probably not right now, but in the next few years. My plan right now is to wait a bit and see how the SX series advances. This will make the upgrade drastic when I eventually go for it, as well as give me time to find answers to my questions and see if those answers may change in the near future.
The hardest part of upgrading for me is the touch screen. Because I am completely blind, I will have a lot of difficulty making use of the touch screen display independently, so far as I know.
The good news is that even if I get a new keyboard, even one I can barely use, I would still find the purchase worthwhile. Most of what I would use it for is midi sequencing with an external sequencer. As long as the keyboard can be a plug-and-play midi device (and all recent psr-s keyboards seem to be), I'll be largely okay, at least while I'm at home.
But there are other things I'd need which make this a bit more difficult. I'll just make a list of things I know how to do on the S970 which I fear I will lose on the Sx900 or a similar touch screen model.
1. Recording. For the best quality, I like to record my sequences natively using the audio recorder. It's easy to do once you know the button sequence on the S970.
2. Live play. When I use the keyboard at a gig, I often use the audio player as a backing band of sorts, while I play live on top. I am routinely switching voices, or advancing to the next song on my flash drive. Thus, I need to be able to switch voices and songs independently.
3. Expansion content. I never seriously got into expantion packs, but I do take an interest in it. One day I might make some expansion sounds of my own or purchase some. I know how to import content to the S970, again it's just a matter of memorizing the button sequence, then waiting for the unit to restart.
I know there are potential workarounds: Instead of using audio recorder, I could just use an aux cable or an audio interface and record that way and get a good recording even if it's not perfectly clean. Instead of using the audio player, I could use an external device for playback. Instead of switching voices, I could have someone help me set up registration banks maybe. Instead of dealing with expansions, I could just forget them; I find them interesting more than I actually need them. In a way it's kind of a bleak outlook to have, but the new sounds do get me excited enough to purchase the keyboard anyway, even if all I'm using it for is midi sequencing and a midi controller. For live play, I'll just use the S970, until it dies... I'm trying not to think about that as I won't really have a plan b at that point.
I remember doing a bit of research on this a while back, and reading that voice guidance was an option on the PSR-SX series now, but that blind people found it clunky/unfinished. I also downloaded the Genos voice guidance files just to see why it as so big, and I found that all the voice prompts were just ordinary wav files so that alone could pose problems for unrestricted access. I wouldn't want voice guidance blaring over the speakers at a gig, and if it is just using wav files, I wouldn't be able to use it to browse custom content, though the audio recording concern might? be solved and I would certainly be grateful for that.
So in closing, I guess I'll just ask for your thoughts on my questions, whether good, bad or just speculative. And those who have experience with the voice guidance, how does it work and what are its limitations?
This is a big stepping stone, and I need all the input I can get.
Thanks in advance for your help!